The application of decorative means to various foodstuffs, such as the surface of a cake, essentially derived over the years as an individual craft of the artisans skilled efforts in providing personalized decorations to such components. For example, early ornamentations provided to cakes, cookies and related types of foodstuffs, fairly well depend upon the skill, dexterity, and imagination of the baker, in order to get any facsimile of decoration upon the finished food product.
Decorating surfaces of food products have gained tremendous popularity throughout the world. Numerous automatic systems for reproducing a variety of images are currently available at the market.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,230,073 assigned commonly with this application and fully incorporated herein by reference discloses a jet printing device producing images directly on a food item. While the device provides high definition imaging transfer onto the surface of food item, its delivering assembly for guiding foodstuff trays toward a printing station is complex and cumbersome.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide an apparatus that provides a simple structure of a guiding mechanism for delivering foodstuff trays towards a printer station. Furthermore, a simple and reliable alignment system providing automatic alignment of the foodstuff trays delivered at the printer station is also desirable.